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Topic: Do you want there to be a creator? [#2629] (Read 21001 times)

i posted a link on sexual reproduction that you apparently have overlooked.

some mollusks can reproduce sexually or asexually, depending on the environmental advantages. there's no reason to require a hopeful monster in the evolution of sex. both methods can occur side by side, and do, today, right now.

requiring gametes and sexual reproduction to occur successfully all at once, full-blown, is something isn't required in nature.

Fish, Kevinagain, fish can do it. If you have a tank of guppies and you remove all the males after a while one of females starts acting macha and bullying the other girls. Then she changes her sex organs over to male and becomes a guy.

For some reptiles it's the temperature at which the eggs were brooded. In some seasons of the year the eggs will be born all female and other seasons, male.

From the expanded lyrics to the theme song for Cheers:

Roll out of bed, Mr. Coffee's dead; The morning's looking bright; And your shrink ran off to Europe, And didn't even write; And your husband wants to be a girl;

Be glad there's one place in the world Where everybody knows your name, And they're always glad you came; You want to go where people know, People are all the same; You want to go where everybody knows your name.

chickens too. take out the ovary of a hen and the remaining undifferentiated gonad can become a functioning testis.

what i was interested in was the fact that in these particular snails, sexual reproduction can occur alongside asexual reproduction, and therefore therefore there's no penalty for evolving variation in the system. it's an example of how the advantages of sexual reproduction can be added to a perfectly satisfactory pre-existing asexual system with no penalty.

truth was asking for an explanation of how sex could have evolved. the snails and their parasites provide one possible scenario, in which there's nothing lost and much to be gained by adding it.

kcrady, Azdgari, and Irish, when you refer to a pill being metabolised, or chicken nuggets or photosynthesis you have living things, humans and plants, making living things, so it confirms the law “all life is from life”.

The point we were making is that there is no difference between "living matter" and "non-living matter" from the perspective of the matter itself. "Living matter" is simply matter participating in a set of self-perpetuating chemical reactions. Since life is a process of chemistry, there is nothing that forbids its simplest form from self-organizing under the proper conditions. This does not require an intelligent person any more than snowflakes require tiny snowflake faeries fashioning each one with little chisels.

Even if abiogenesis is wildly improbable, given the size and age of even the visible Cosmos (not to mention whatever might exist outside of our light-cone), there are worlds enough, and time. No matter how improbable it might be, it is far more probable, by many orders of magnitude, than the incredibly intricate assembly of component parts necessary to form any sort of thinking, designing person. Persons just seem easy because we look at Universe through person-colored glasses.

You haven't come close to demonstrating the "always" part of your claim. All you've got so far is that scientists have not replicated abiogenesis in a lab--yet. To make your absolutist claim stick, you have to be able to prove that they can't ever replicate abiogenesis, because abiogenesis is physically impossible, like perpetual motion machines.

Is your creator "life?"

If yes, and "life always comes from life," then what life did "he" come from? And where did that life come from? If you want to say, "No, he was always there, he's eternal," then you have an example of life (presumably the very biggest, specialest, life-y-est life form there is) that does not come from life, and your claim that "life always comes from life" fails.

If no--i.e., "he" is something Other, a different category of being than "life" as we know it (i.e., he does not have a metabolism, doesn't reproduce, isn't composed of matter/energy, exists "outside of space and time," etc.)--then once again, we have an example of life coming from non-life, and your claim fails.

Since even your own model does not support the claim that "life always comes from life," we have no reason to accept that claim. Since a self-replicating molecule is so much simpler and more parsimonious than any hypothesis involving intelligent persons, it has the status of a default explanation.

But the big question is the first living cell appearing 3.2 billion or so years ago, there was no other living thing around, so it had to come alive all by itself, this has never been observed anywhere, not even in a lab.

Likewise for Invisible Magic Persons of any sort (gods, devils, djinn, nature-spirits, etc., etc.). Likewise, for Magic itself. In fact, every single thing we have ever come to understand about reality has turned out to be: Not Magic. Thunderstorms can happen without requiring the existence of a Zeus or Thor. Microorganisms and viruses are sufficient to explain disease without demon-possession or malign spells cast by the little old lady down the street. And so on.

There was a time when virtually everything, from the movement of the celestial bodies to weather to fertility to victory or defeat in battle, was thought to be caused by one Invisible Magic Person or another. Then we developed the tools to start making a systematic effort to understand how reality works. IMP-based explanations for things were supplanted by natural explanations for things over and over and over again, in an unbroken string of scientific discoveries, for 400 years. Based on this track record, we have every reason to expect that abiogenesis will also turn out to have a natural explanation, especially since we already have some of the puzzle pieces.

Can you refer me to the lab report on the self assembling proteins, I’d like to read it, thanks.

Respond to the Wikipedia article on abiogenesis you've already been given with enough technical mastery to indicate that you're operating on a par with the professionals in the field, then we'll start looking up published papers and "lab reports." BTW, can you provide any published papers or lab reports about cells (or anything else) being created by magic? Please include the relevant equations showing how the magical being(s) work, and how whatever they're made of interacts with matter/energy and time. I'd like to read it, thanks.

And sorry about my references to the creator as a single male god, (ie “he”) that’s just habit, which comes from years of research, but I don’t want to force my opinions on people.

You are trying to persuade us that your views are correct, aren't you? Assuming that your "years of research" is not equivalent to "I learned it in Sunday School and believed it ever since," you can presumably demonstrate that there's only one god, that it's male, and that it is specifically (your understanding of) the Christian god. Since no other theologian has been able to accomplish this feat,[1] you should at the very least expect to be hailed as the greatest theologian in the history of Christendom, even if you don't win a Nobel Prize.[2]

In reality the key question isn’t how we define the creator, the question is, does science indicate that one is required for us and the universe to exist.

There you go again--just assuming that "the creator" is going to be a singular entity. Most major design projects (e.g. a new airliner, rocket, city, car, computer operating system, whatever) are the result of teamwork, we have no reason to assume a single creator even if we had evidence for creation. If a proposed creator is modeled as a semantic-thinking, language-using person, then it makes more sense to assume it is a member of a civilization, than to suppose that it modified itself to have a capacity for language and invented a language for itself when, in its original state, it would not have the concept of "other person" much less any actual examples to talk to.

As to the question of whether science requires creators to explain the existence of the Cosmos or us, the answer, according to the community of trained, qualified, and practicing scientists, is "no." If you know so much more than them, and your ideas are better validated than theirs, where's your trophy case full of Nobel Prizes? Once again: any personal being is far, far, faaaaaaaaaaaaar more complicated than a self-replicating molecule[3] or early cell. If we have to pick one or the other as more likely to "just happen," the molecule or cell wins hands down.

Irish, why don’t I kill myself? good point and most christians don’t even realise what I’m about to say, but the only reason, and I mean ONLY reason God doesn’t whisk them up to heaven when they ask Jesus to save them is because he wants them here to help others get saved too, if they were all whisked away there’d be no one to spread the word.

So, your proposed creator can design and create more than a hundred billion galaxies and innumerable -illions of worlds, but he can't advertise himself to the population of one little planet without humans to do it for him? Really? Isn't Yahweh supposed to have myriads of angels at his command? "Angel" comes from a Greek word meaning "messenger." What does he have messengers for, if not to "spread the word?"

Otherwise there would be a great deal more agreement among religious people on the nature of the divine, and among Christians themselves about what Yahweh is like, what he wants people to believe, etc..

All you've got so far is that scientists have not replicated abiogenesis in a lab--yet. To make your absolutist claim stick, you have to be able to prove that they can't ever replicate abiogenesis, because abiogenesis is physically impossible, like perpetual motion machines.

I am probably missing something but I have a question. If we have never observed living material spring spontaneously from non-living material what reason do scientists have to be looking for that result in the first place? Seems counter intuitive to the whole scientific process to me.

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When I criticize political parties or candidates, I am not criticizing you. If I criticize you, there will be no doubt in your mind as to what I am saying.

I am probably missing something but I have a question. If we have never observed living material spring spontaneously from non-living material what reason do scientists have to be looking for that result in the first place? Seems counter intuitive to the whole scientific process to me.

There are two options here:Either life has always existed since "before" the Big Bang or life came from non-life. Considering that, in the beginning, atoms hadn't even been formed, I think it's safe to say that the latter is true.

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My names are many, yet I am One.-Orion, son of Fire and Light, Sol Invictus.

There are two options here:Either life has always existed since "before" the Big Bang or life came from non-life. Considering that, in the beginning, atoms hadn't even been formed, I think it's safe to say that the latter is true.

Couldn't we assume that living matter was present in the singularity that produced the Big Bang?

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When I criticize political parties or candidates, I am not criticizing you. If I criticize you, there will be no doubt in your mind as to what I am saying.

Since we don't know exactly what happened waaaaaaaay back when, it's all just conjecture past a certain point, no? I'm okay with the thought that living material has always existed at some level or the other. I am also okay with the thought that something came from nothing. But it still doesn't answer my question of why scientists would actively try to achieve results for something that we have no solid indication is possible. I mean, why not just fire up the old cold fusion experiments while we are at it?

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When I criticize political parties or candidates, I am not criticizing you. If I criticize you, there will be no doubt in your mind as to what I am saying.

Since we don't know exactly what happened waaaaaaaay back when, it's all just conjecture past a certain point, no?

We know that living matter most certainly did not exist back then. The temperatures were too high for even protons, neutrons and electrons to form. No protons, neutrons or electrons=No atoms=No molecules=No living matter.

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My names are many, yet I am One.-Orion, son of Fire and Light, Sol Invictus.

I am probably missing something but I have a question. If we have never observed living material spring spontaneously from non-living material what reason do scientists have to be looking for that result in the first place? Seems counter intuitive to the whole scientific process to me.

First of all, there is no such thing as "living material." A carbon atom in your brain is no different than a carbon atom in a rock. When asking how the chemical process we call "life" got started, it makes no sense to say, "It was started by an even more complicated and inexplicable process of life!" That isn't an answer. The only alternative left is, "It got started as a result of other, simpler processes." And so, scientists set out to discover what those processes might have been.

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"The question of whether atheists are, you know, right, typically gets sidestepped in favor of what is apparently the much more compelling question of whether atheists are jerks."

We know that living matter most certainly did not exist back then. The temperatures were too high for even protons, neutrons and electrons to form. No protons, neutrons or electrons=No atoms=No molecules=No living matter.

One last question before I retire and please forgive my ignorance. How do we KNOW this?

Edit@ kcrady

Your comment about "living material" is just far too heavy for me to contemplate or respond to at the moment. The last part I get however.

« Last Edit: December 09, 2011, 03:13:48 AM by jaybwell32 »

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When I criticize political parties or candidates, I am not criticizing you. If I criticize you, there will be no doubt in your mind as to what I am saying.

One last question before I retire and please forgive my ignorance. How do we KNOW this?

E=mc2If we can separate electrons from their atoms and even "force" nuclear fission with our limited resources (a speck of a speck of a speck (...) of a speck of dust compared to the universe), imagine what would happen if all the energy of the universe[1] were in the same place. Virtually nothing could form there.First it had to cool down quite a bit, then quarks and other subatomic particles appeared, then protons, neutrons and electrons formed, then hydrogen atoms formed, then stars, then heavier elements, then planets, then what we call life.

nogogsforme, I don’t think any of us like how our bodies break down and I gather we all have an interest in living forever, is it possible that the creator made our bodies to break down and die for a reason? I know I don’t want to live forever in this god forsaken world of suffering

I have a very important question for you. Why would a god forsake this world? Why would a god deliberately create a world of suffering (assuming a benevolent god)? I could understand the concept of a powerful entity that creates a universe that has (or will develop) a planet or planets that have (or can develop/sustain life) and then just leaves the universe to live out its "life"

BUT why would a god create a universe, one habitable planet, humans that the god supposedly loves (I am of course assuming that you believe that this god loves us) and then FORSAKE us and this planet? Please don't reply with anything about "the fall" or "sin". According to christian doctrine - the god created us. So if the god finds flaws with us or is offended by something that we do, think or say - whose fault is that?

If I design and build a birdhouse with a guillotine right inside the door and it cuts the head off of every bird that pokes its head in the door, whose fault is that? Do I blame the birdhouse? Do I blame the birds?

Also, on this topic of suffering. Yes, I am aware that there is suffering in the world but do you honestly suffer every minute of every day? Do you never have a happy moment in your life? I know that I don't suffer every minute every day. *Please don't misunderstand. I know that there are people in the world that suffer nearly every minute of every day (starving children in 3rd world countries, ...)

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Keep the reasons why you don’t want there to be a creator coming, this is good stuff.

I keep seeing you post this statement or something equivalent and it is really annoying me. I don't know if you really feel this way or if you are just trying to piss people off.

I, and I think most of the people on this forum, don't actively want there to NOT be a creator. I know that I don't sit around brooding and thinking "I DO NOT want a creator to exist!". There is a huge difference between discussing the flaws and incompetence of the christian god (or god of the bible) and actively hoping/wishing that god does not exist. I don't NOT want there to be a creator but I see no evidence for any gods/creators existing and a god/creator that provides no evidence that it exists and does not interact in human lives (or this world) in any demonstrable way is irrelevant and might as well not exist.

Not the creator god of any major religion, that's for sure! Psycho and mean and petty and mostly absent, sort of a sadistic, sexually abusive, conservative deadbeat dad? No thanks!

I can imagine the kind of creator I would like there to be, if there had to be one. A wise, cool and groovy laid-back kumbayah kinda dude/dudette who makes sure everyone has musical talent, enough to eat, a body that works and doesn't break down until you are ready to go, and the ability to let each living creature live out his/her/its life with a cheerful "ciao, li'l buddy" at the end.

Sort of a cross between Gandhi, Yoda, Bob Marley and Grandmother Willow from Pocahontas. If he looks like Robert Downey Jr, that wouldn't hurt.... With a big dose of the Prime Directive -- non-intervention into human affairs, unless we really start to get crazy and try to destroy the earth or something.

That seems pretty simple and straightforward. No eternal judgments, no weird tests, no human or animal sacrifices, no sins, either original or plagiarized. People and cultures would be able to work out their own laws and customs as they saw fit, with one caveat: "don't hurt nobody".

My creator person would make it so any time one person intentionally and with malice aforethought hurt someone else or damaged any part of the earth, the same exact pain or damage would snap back at them. Don't enslave someone, if you don't want to find yourself being made a slave, too.

That's it. The warning "don't hurt nobody" would not require any overlong sacred texts or endless lists of laws. It would just be the Golden Rule, inscribed in the reality of the world. Since every child would have experienced the "snap back" from an early age, you would not need to have "thou shalt nots" listed anywhere. It would be internalized that if you hurt anyone, you get hurt, too.

And every ten years or so check in to remind all of us that we did not have to worship or pray or anything, just don't hurt nobody. And party on!

... the only reason, and I mean ONLY reason God doesn’t whisk them up to heaven when they ask Jesus to save them is because he wants them here to help others get saved too, if they were all whisked away there’d be no one to spread the word

My emphasis added for point

Why doesn't God or Jesus come and spread the word? That would literally change the world overnight. I, along with millions of other atheists (I assume) would become Christians overnight if shown the tiniest real evidence of the existence of God.

Azdgari, as far as we know life has never come from non life without the help of existing life, why? One explanation is that life itself is too complex to arise without the help of existing life.

Irish, if Jesus came back again how long do you think he would last before he was killed again, he wouldn’t last 3 years, I’d give him 3 months at the most before someone would knock him off. Yes he’s a nice guy, but he also exposes peoples motives and hearts immediately and we humans don’t like being exposed for who we really are, especially world leaders, so they’d get rid of him quick smart. That wouldn’t prove to anyone that God existed. Or what if he resurrected himself and stayed around with invincibility, some might believe in God then. But, if he did that, but stayed the nice guy (who, yes, exposes people’s hearts) but doesn’t force anyone to be silent, or be removed, then imagine the chaos that would surround him, the people who don’t like him would try and stop anyone from getting to him (since they can’t kill him). So then he would have to move away from the blockade, but they’d find him again and set up their blockade again, it would really be a waste of time. He’s much better off letting people write down what he said and did the one time and leaving us to sort it out for ourselves. There is one other option, he could stay, but not as the nice guy, but as one who executes his power to silence and remove people setting up blockades, but then he has to be fair, so he would have to judge all of us, oh woops, we’d all be found guilty, we’d all come under judgement and we’d all be removed, sounds like a kind of apocalypse doesn’t it. He’s said he’ll come in all his power one day, but is giving us time to believe his words first.

Free will is extremely important in all this, the freedom that death brings also comes with consequences, if we have freely given up our will to God already, then God is free (ie we’ve given him permission) to make us into a new person (when we die, or when he comes back in judgement), who is perfect, who can hang out with him in heaven, but if we haven’t given up our will to God already, then he isn’t free to make us into a new person, he has no right to change us, he doesn’t force himself upon us, so he will leave us alone and not change us, leave us as we are, and what are we? If God takes away the good gifts he’s given us, what are we and what are we left with? And that is what we’ll have for all eternity, our free will, but no light, no food, no friends, just our free will.

Sorry this explanation is really bad because its so brief, but you hopefully get the gist. The bible is much better at explaining it.

Regarding the video, it is a problem in that the first cell to evolve such that its only method of reproduction is with gametes wouldn’t be able to pass on this “mutation”.

Wright, self-replicating proteins haven’t been observed to come about independent of pre-existing life either and current cosmology has no explanation for star or planet formation, gravity isn’t strong enough to force a cloud of gas into a star, just like our atmosphere doesn’t squash down to earth, gravity is quite weak and cosmologists know it. A very large force is required to push a cloud of gas into a what we now see as stars, but such a force hasn’t been discovered yet.

free, just because the creator knows what will happen doesn’t mean we don’t have free will, he still lets us do whatever we want

Lucifer, yes your clarification helps, but it is possible for a creator to have a purpose for us, but leaves us free to follow it or not, so we’d still have free will.

Kevinagain, yes but many organisms do now require gametes so at the point they mutated to require it, that mutation wouldn’t have been passed on because there’d be no one to mate with.

Kcrady, no sorry I don’t know of any lab reports on cells being created by magic, or by a creator, but one can see that its possible to have the once off instance by the creator’s choice as an explanation, but a natural explanation means that it can and should happen again and be repeatable, so far it hasn’t been seen to be repeatable, so it is left in the realms of the special once off explanation.

Seeing an angel wouldn’t prove the existence of god, it would just freak everyone out, it wouldn’t be helpful at all.

jaybwell32, scientists look for the natural explanation for the existence of life because they don’t want there to be a creator, its a very normal thing to do, and we all do it at some level

jtk73, sorry the “god forsaken world” was just an expression, I don’t believe it is literally god forsaken. The suffering question is very closely linked to the free will question, we have free will, which means we can harm each other and bring suffering, so why did the creator make us with free will?

nogodsforme, so when someone does hurt somebody how do you see the “snap back” actually working, would the “snap back” cause us physical pain, how much? Would we still be able to work and earn a living and eat, or would the pain be too much to do that, which means we’d die (hmm sounds like capital punishment), but then if it wasn’t painful enough we’d ignore it and keep on hurting people, so at what point does your theory actually work?

Wright, self-replicating proteins haven’t been observed to come about independent of pre-existing life either and current cosmology has no explanation for star or planet formation, gravity isn’t strong enough to force a cloud of gas into a star, just like our atmosphere doesn’t squash down to earth, gravity is quite weak and cosmologists know it. A very large force is required to push a cloud of gas into a what we now see as stars, but such a force hasn’t been discovered yet.

So... much... fail.

Ok, if you're this willfully ignorant, it isn't worth having a discussion with you.

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Live a good life... If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. I am not afraid.--Marcus Aurelius

He’s much better off letting people write down what he said and did the one time and leaving us to sort it out for ourselves.

Oh yes, we see this when Christians kill and hate each other all certain that they and only they know what this god “really” meant.

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Free will is extremely important in all this, the freedom that death brings also comes with consequences, if we have freely given up our will to God already, then God is free (ie we’ve given him permission) to make us into a new person (when we die, or when he comes back in judgement), who is perfect, who can hang out with him in heaven, but if we haven’t given up our will to God already, then he isn’t free to make us into a new person, he has no right to change us, he doesn’t force himself upon us, so he will leave us alone and not change us, leave us as we are, and what are we? If God takes away the good gifts he’s given us, what are we and what are we left with? And that is what we’ll have for all eternity, our free will, but no light, no food, no friends, just our free will.

wow, one more Christian who has evidently never read his magic book. Your bible never claims free will and indeed repeated indicates that this god is not interested in free will. It’s hysterical that you want to claim free will and then say we’ve “freely given up our will” to this god of yours. Which is it?

Your god forces itself on people just to show off (see the Pharoah and Job’s family) and intentionally makes sure that some people will never be able to accept this god (see JC’s explanation on why he uses parables). We also have Romans (chapter 9 since I’m sure you are quite ignorant of it) where various bible characters again never had a chance, and where your god intentionally creates people who are only for being destroyed according to its whim. Then again, we have a lovely bit in Revelation where this god of yours, intentionally damns people who were perfectly fine up until he allows the “beast” out of the “pit” to corrupt more souls. This after your god kills all “evil” people *and* allows JC to rule over the earth and the good people left.

And your explanation is really bad since it ignores your own religion and makes up baseless nonsense, as all Christian “explanations” do.

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"There is no use in arguing with a man who can multiply anything by the square root of minus 1" - Pirates of Venus, ERB

Irish, if Jesus came back again how long do you think he would last before he was killed again, he wouldn’t last 3 years, I’d give him 3 months at the most before someone would knock him off.

>snip<

He’s much better off letting people write down what he said and did the one time and leaving us to sort it out for ourselves.

Your problem here is twofold: First, you assume that a (supposedly) super-intelligent being isn't any smarter than you are. Second, you want "there to be a creator" so bad that your biases are clouding your ability to think of other possibilities.

Consider Diogenes of Oenoanda. He was a Greek philosopher who carved a treatise in stone. Jesus could surely have done the same thing and (if he really is an omnipotent superbeing) seen to it that his inscription was preserved. That would have solved all manner of controversies and schisms in the early Church, and provided Christians with an uncontroversial "New Testament." That would certainly have been a huge improvement over leaving it to ordinary humans to write the "New Testament," so that others have to just take their word for it that they're representing Jesus and revealed doctrine correctly. A stone inscription carved by Jesus' own hand would also prevent the whole issue of textual corruption over time, which resulted from the flawed human process of copying, re-copying and re-re-copying fragile parchment and papyrus scrolls over the centuries.

If I were "the creator," I could think of an even better method of "spreading the word:" I could create certain plants and fungi that, when ingested, would open the doors of spiritual perception, so that my beloved children could experience me and the spiritual realm(s) directly. I could see to it that such species of plants were available all over the world, wherever humans lived. Since no one but "the creator" could have made such plants (i.e., they can't be forged or otherwise faked by humans), my children would not be left wandering among a sea of false religions and sects, having to guess at random (or just based on where and when they were born) which of them, if any, is true. This method would bypass status-seeking human clergy with venal motives to corrupt the divine Message for their own power and profit. Then, just to be sure, I could encode a backup copy of my Message into the digits of pi.

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"The question of whether atheists are, you know, right, typically gets sidestepped in favor of what is apparently the much more compelling question of whether atheists are jerks."

nogodsforme, so when someone does hurt somebody how do you see the “snap back” actually working, would the “snap back” cause us physical pain, how much? Would we still be able to work and earn a living and eat, or would the pain be too much to do that, which means we’d die (hmm sounds like capital punishment), but then if it wasn’t painful enough we’d ignore it and keep on hurting people, so at what point does your theory actually work?

I haven't thought it through that far-- this is for the all-powerful, all-knowing, its-all-good creator person to work out! I think I was going for the idea that everyone wants life to be fair, and there should be some payback-- that is the whole concept underlying heaven and hell. Some kind of justice in an unjust world.

I want the justice to happen immediately, not after you die; and in proportion to the damage done, not eternal punishment for lying, stealing or getting into a fist fight. And certainly not punishing anyone for having the wrong ideas or thoughts! Only if you act on it and hurt someone.

Intent would have to be taken into account, so if you are a doctor doing surgery, that would not hurt you. Only if you do something with the intent to do harm-- that way mentally handicapped people and children would not get the same level of "snap back". How's that?

I haven't thought enough to get into animal rights and eating meat....maybe the creator could just have a certain number of animals die peacefully so we could eat them?

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When all of Cinderella's finery changed back at midnight, why didn't the shoes disappear? What's up with that?

Azdgari, as far as we know life has never come from non life without the help of existing life, why? One explanation is that life itself is too complex to arise without the help of existing life...

And yet you'd have us believe that an infinately complex being (god) existed without the help of existing life. This is such a monstrous failure of logic that I don't even know where to begin. Anyone who creates anything knows that you start at the beginning, with the simplest of elements. You build on that until you have your final, complex thing. Try software programming and you'll understand what I mean. At the mechanical level, you have switches that can be either on or off. That's then abstracted into 0s and 1s. From there we build assembly language, and then an operating system and languages. Now we can finally build our applications, which is what the user finally sees.

And that's massively simplified. Ipad apps don't simply *poof* into being. They must be built from the ground up, with those little switches that are either open or closed. On or off. 1 or 0.

I take great comfort in the evidence against a god/creator because I KNOW that such a being would have to be a loving, cruel, sadistic monster - with that love being shown to us in our suffering. The ultimate abusive parent. No benevolent being could have made this universe; there are far too many sources of pain and suffering in it for an omnipotent and omniscient being to exist. A benevolent, omnipotent being would have to be an idiot and thus could not be the creator.

Why else would some of us need psychoactive pharmaceuticals to approach normal behavior? The evidence is overwhelmingly against a benevolent creator - only a malevolent creator could exist. And if you read the Bible without preconceptions you see a malevolent God: "original sin" was a set-up, Cain was rewarded for killing Abel, and the Great Flood just to name a few at the start.

I also have more personal reasons for which I am glad I am an atheist. And if you knew them you would be glad I am an atheist also.

Regarding abiogenesis and other evolution aspects: read some of Dawkins' books. He explains things very well including one theory that finds a potential source of abiogenesis in the geothermal smokers of the ocean depths. Sorry, I don't recall which book at the moment - and I'm too tired to go finding which ones to suggest starting with.

« Last Edit: December 14, 2011, 02:04:52 AM by Samothec »

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Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding. - Martin Luther

Wright, maybe I worded that a little wrong, if you have a cloud of gas (ie spread out from a “big bang”) then gravity won’t cause the cloud to become any more dense, it will just stay a cloud or become less dense, gravity isn’t strong enough to overcome the gas pressure within the cloud.

Velkyn, just because I or you interpret the bible differently doesn’t mean there is no creator, just because someone doesn’t like the bible doesn’t mean there is no creator, what we need to do is let science lead us where it will and as far as I can tell it leads directly to a the conclusion that there must be a creator, I don’t want there to be a creator, but who am I to oppose what science so clearly shows.

Kcrady, yes obviously the existence of a creator is improbably, but we have to seriously take what we have in science and if it leads to a creator then so be it.

If Jesus carved his writing in stone it wouldn’t solve the problem of interpretation, so we’d still be in the same boat, and the same goes for fungi that opens spiritual perception, we’d still all argue with eachother, but again regardless of what we believe or how badly we interpret the bible or any other history book, it still doesn’t change the truth and science points to a the truth that for us to exist as we do there must be a creator.

nogodsforme, do you really want justice to happen immediately? If you were to face the creator of the universe right now what do you think they’d say? Have you ever said something to someone to intentionally hurt them? I know I have.

Traveler, you building with simple beginnings implies a “builder”, completely proving that complexity requires greater complexity to exist resulting in infinite complexity, some call that a creator, my understanding of science tells me that the creator must have infinite complexity, information, energy, and order. Thats just from following the laws of science.

Samothec, your reasons are based in religious interpretation, not in science, what does science tell you?

"so minor they are negligible"? Seriously? Smallpox, AIDS, guinea worms, SIDS... kcrady already covered what can go wrong with childbirth... all "negligible"? Spoken by someone who almost certainly has never been touched by any of the above! Pull your head outta your ass, already!

It really is ridiculous.

I remember reading one of Richard Bach's books a while back, where he talks about something that he used to do quite a bit: barnstorming throughout the midwest, selling rides in his biplane. He related the story of one woman who wanted a ride but wasn't sure whether the plane was safe. He told her that the plane was built one year before he was born and was still going to be going strong long after they were both dead. And the biplane, obviously, was designed and built by puny humans, not an omnimax being.

Personally, though, I think my favorite design "feature" of the human body is the fact that the openings for the esophagus and the trachea are located right next to each other, so that we can conveniently choke on our food. Brilliant.